What are perceptions and how to manage them

By Sulakshana Viswanathan on 2017-01-17

The article "What are perceptions?" defines the term perception from a novice person standpoint. To understand perceptions, real time scenarios and the way you perceive a particular incident, object etc determines your managerial or analysis capability. The article gives you a simple understanding of how perceptions play an important role in your personal as well as career life.

What you see is What you perceive is a popular line used by writers. Would you agree to second this statement? Maybe you would think different if you read this famous excerpt from Sherlock Holmes:

"Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson go on a camping trip. After dinner and a drink, they go to sleep. Hours later, Holmes wakes up and questions his good friend."Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see."Watson replies, "I see millions of stars.""What does that tell you?" Watson ponders for a minute."Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets.""Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo.""Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three.""Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant.""Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow.""What does it tell you, Holmes?"Holmes is silent for a minute, then speaks: "Watson, you idiot. Someone has stolen our tent!"How you see things is more important than what you see? This is known as the art of perception. To perceive is to use the brain to translate any object or incident or anything we see, hear, and touch with our body.

Let us understand the following behavioral patterns:- When a child sees a chocolate, the child's brain understands that it is an eatable product and hence he would eat.- A baby may see an insect crawling and imagine it is a toy and chase to grab the harmful insect.- An adult would receive information with his sensual organs and perceive it based on his literacy capacity.

Without perceptions, your sense organs which are the eyes, ears, touch, and the brain will not be in sync with each other.The right perception syncs the brain to the sense organs and is very important to rational thinking. Rational thinking is important because what you perceive is what you will speak. When you see a person or an incident, perception will translate the information you receive in your brain and make you talk or communicate what you think.

In the above excerpt from Sherlock Holmes, if you were to comment you would say “Holmes is an intelligent man”, “Holmes is an investigator and Watson is his assistant”, “Watson talks too much”, “Holmes is smart”, “Watson is dumb”. Hence you would communicate what you see or hear according to what you perceive in the brain. As you communicate, you immediately make a judgement about a person, object, or an incident.

To buy a damaged object like maybe a Phone, you would see and immediately refuse purchasing saying “I won’t buy this product as it is damaged”. You may not use the same judgement when you see incidents or people as they are related to emotions.

To communicate in the right manner, one must perceive things in the right angle. Perception influences communication which in turn influence decisions. A decision to say “Yes” or “No” or “Hang in-between with a maybe” would happen based on how you sync communication with perception with the sensual organs.Practice the art of perception by doing scenario tests in various similar websites like http://www.practiceaptitudetests.com/situational-judgement-tests/ . These tests will improve the art of perception in a reality mode for growth.